


your best american girl

by borys



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, F/M, Love Triangles, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 17:31:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16100405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borys/pseuds/borys
Summary: youre the one, youre all i ever wanted, i think i’ll regret this(an exploration of the dynamics between michael, trevor, and amanda)





	your best american girl

**Author's Note:**

> a timeline: m&t meet in 1985 (20 years old). a&m meet: 1991 (a:21, m:26).  
> tracey is born in 1991, jimmy is born in 1993

Amanda is 21 when she meets Michael, but he barely registers on her radar.

He is there with a group, three other men. One is blond and round and meek, wearing a crooked cone birthday hat, the kind that straps under your chin. One is brunette, obviously drunk and urging the young one to take more shots. She is not interested in them. She is interested in the fourth.

He’s blond and heavy-set, but in a stronger and more handsome way than the apparent birthday boy. He is also encouraging the kid to take shots, slapping his back and whooping. She sets her mind on at least giving him a lap dance and trails over to the table.

“Hi,” she says, putting on her best smile. “We celebrating a birthday over here?” 

The kid immediately flushes and fiddles with the string under his neck. He’s probably only about 19, too young to be in there by far, but Amanda wasn’t going to be a stickler about it. 

“Yup! He’s turning 21!” The drunk guy with brown hair smiles at her. He has a mullet and has obviously been doing more than drinking, from the scabs on his hands and the way his eyes twitched. 

The guy she was interested in shook the kid’s shoulder violently. “Want a dance, walker?” He was clearly making fun of him, but Amanda could make out his eyes rolling behind the glare of the club lights off of his glasses.

“Fuck off, B.” 

The formerly silent member of the group mumbled, “I need a fucking drink.” And got up and left the table.

The brunette nodded in agreement and got up to follow him, spilling the bit of leftover whiskey he had onto the front of his shirt. 

When he got up, Amanda realized the reasoning behind the nickname. Next to the kid sat a cane, leaning against the table. She didn’t even know if you could give a dance to someone with a cane, she’d be a little afraid she’d break him. 

She adjusted her bra and adjusted her smile, looking down at the mousy almost-teenager in front of her. “You want a dance? I get a lot of birthday boys in here.”

He went a deeper red, which would be cute if he wasn’t staring at her boobs like he was taking a vision test. 

“Alright, play nice.” Who they referred to as B said, grabbing a wallet that sat on the table and fishing five twenties out. He slapped it into the kid’s hand. “Have fun, L!” 

“This is my fucking wallet. Why don’t you pay for it?” L snatches his wallet back and puts it in his pocket, glaring. “Or, better yet, why don’t you get a dance and leave me alone?”

The brunette who had returned carrying two beers in one hand, slapped the side of B’s head in a friendly way. “Can’t spread the clap if your dick isn’t out!” 

The conviction Amanda had for him had fizzled out immediately. 

“Fuck off, T. I’m surprised your dick hasn’t fallen off already. At least I have standards.” 

“It’s not a matter of standards, it’s a matter of generosity. I like to think of myself as equal opportunity.” He sat down, the fourth guy who’s name she hasn’t caught sitting next to him. He looks bored.

“There’s a name for that, I think.” L muttered, still kind of staring at Amanda’s boobs. 

T immediately stood up and leaned across the table, smiling menacingly. “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?” 

Amanda decided she needed to get out of there immediately. She stepped backwards and said, “If you want a dance, come find me.” 

Though Michael made the least impression on her that night, he had taken her up for her offer on a dance and, well, everything else was history. 

She thought her introduction to everyone was well-fitting. Lester would stare at her boobs until she was well into her thirties, Brad would continue to be a pigheaded asshole (though still handsome) and Trevor was always going to be Trevor.

From the second she became more than a passing figure in Michael’s life, he registered her as a threat, even though neither him or Michael would admit it. It wasn’t even that Trevor seemed to dislike her for her personality. He was competitive with her intrinsically, like they had to play tug of war for Michael’s attention. 

She didn’t like this made up rivalry at first. He would shit talk her when they went to visit and when Michael called her, she could always hear Trevor’s loud complaining. But soon it became normal to her, easy.

He would come over, and be drunk or tweaked out in front of her fucking kids, and she would yell and he would yell and Michael would yell, and since Michael had become the mortal enemy of his children already, he was the one who had to apologize.

They could not comprehend why Michael did not seem to care for them, why his solid figure went stony when they clung to his legs and why he found it hard to say anything positive about anything, much less them. 

They only began to understand when they visited Michael’s parents house while his mother was dying of cancer. He hadn’t seen them in a couple years, and his father struck him across the face with the flat of his palm when he arrived at the door. 

Tracey was only 9, but she cried, “Daddy!” and flung her arms around his waist, placing herself between Michael and his father. The sight of a 62 pound, 4 foot tall third grader defending her father, who killed and robbed indiscriminately, would have made her laugh if it didn’t also make her feel like crying. 

Despite this and a couple other tender moments, Michael and his children did not generally get along. However, they worshipped the ground Trevor walked on. 

He would come up once every couple months with Michael and stay for a day, and bummed around town for a week because Amanda didn’t let him sleep over. It was clearly the highlight of Tracey and Jimmy’s lives.

First of all, he brought presents.

Late and early birthday presents, Christmas presents, and just because presents. 

He bought Jimmy things like walkie talkies, toy planes, and, when he got older, a taser that he advised Jimmy to bring to middle school with him because it was “tough out there.”

(Amanda immediately took it and put it in a shoebox under her bed.)

He liked buying Tracey books. Classics, like A Separate Peace and To Kill A Mockingbird, and non-fiction books about animals and mysterious murder cases and war. She liked the fiction books the better, but would still give facts about bull sharks to anyone who would listen.

Second of all, he was nicer to them than their father.

Michael tried, and Amanda knew that, but trying to explain this to her kids was like talking to a brick wall. She knew they couldn’t understand that Michael doesn’t know how to be a good father, like how some people can’t ride a bike or speak Spanish. 

Trevor was a good uncle, though. It came naturally to him. He helped with homework where Amanda didn't have time and listened to Jimmy rambling about his new comic book when Michael didn’t have the patience.

When Michael came home without Trevor, they pouted and were sullen for the first half of his visit. They slowly warmed back up to him, only to have him leave again. Trevor wasn’t their dad, he wasn’t expected to be there for them like their father was. His non-presence was acceptable, if not disappointing. 

Amanda thought Trevor might kill her one day. 

She isn’t stupid. She knows that something is wrong with him that he can’t change, that he’s aware of but will never be able to fix. And she knows that Trevor cares deeply about Michael, Tracey, and Jimmy. He would never kill them, but he would kill her.

He would raise his family as his own, probably. Sleep in bed with Michael and teach Tracey how to gut a deer and take Jimmy to the park. He wants to be her, to finally sink his teeth into Michael once and for all. 

One night, when Tracey and Jimmy are staying with Amanda’s mother, Trevor calls.

Michael is pretty drunk, but quieter drunk than he usually is. When he falls asleep after being like this, he cries in his sleep and she has to shake him awake. She’s reading a magazine, an article about how to rise above work drama, like she fucking needs that. 

Trevor is almost the only person with their number, so Michael picks up and turns it on speaker phone so he could pour himself another drink. “Hey, T.” 

“Hey yourself. Where are you? You said you’d be back in a week.” Trevor sounds scratchy, jittery, and also more than a bit drunk. Not abnormal. 

Michael set the bottle of whiskey down a little too forcefully and sighed. “It’s Sunday.”

“Yes, it’s fucking Sunday. You left Sunday morning and said you’d be back in a week. It’s about, mm, 11 at night. Not a week.” 

“Yeah, well, why do you care?” 

It was Trevor who sighed this time, forcefully. “I miss you, you dumb piece of shit.” 

Amanda’s head snaps up from her magazine. She met Michael’s eyes. He was silent for a second. 

“Brad not with you?”

“See? You don’t even care! You don’t give a shit about me. You have never given a shit about me.” 

This was typical Trevor drunk-talk. Amanda did understand, Michael was usually about a million miles away and she had to force herself to remember that Michael cared about her.

“Trev, come on. You know I do. Don’t be like that.” It was a Michael tactic, one that he probably didn’t realize he was using, use a nickname to try to inspire affection. She was Mandy when she was angry with him.

“Don’t tell me how to be, you fucking prick. When are you actually going to be back? Don’t fucking lie this time, either.” 

Michael looked at his watch, then at Amanda, who shrugged helplessly. 

“Tomorrow, okay? I’ll leave at noon, be there about 4. You still in the same motel?”

Trevor grunted. 

“Alrighty, T. See you tomorrow. Try to sleep, or something.” Which was code for, “Try not to OD and make me pick you up in the hospital.” 

Trevor hung up.

Amanda had been under the impression that Trevor wasn’t a lonely person. He told fantastical stories about 5 day orgies and coke and hookers, all of which were almost definitely true, but here he was, telling her husband he was alone, that he missed him. 

Of course, she knew Trevor loved him. It’s not hard to identify when Trevor really loves someone. He loves Tracey and Jimmy, and he loves his mother. He loves Michael in a different way, more twisting and uncomfortable, but it’s similar. 

Michael had left when he promised, before the kids got back. She could imagine Trevor, sniffling pathetically and telling him he hadn’t expected him to actually show, and she could imagine Michael kissing him to shut him the hell up for once. 

She knew. She had always known. 

They had this weird energy she felt like she could chew on, and Michael had drunkenly confessed to her more than a couple times that he used to get beaten on in elementary school for looking at the other boys like he shouldn’t have before he learned how to look away. 

It didn’t bother her often. They weren’t getting married or anything. The best she figured, Trevor needed someone, and someone tended to be Michael. Without him, he’d probably blow up the world. Their relationship was the only selfless act Michael was able to perform.

It only bothered her when she saw them. Once, Trevor came to visit and, when they thought she and the kids weren’t around, they started roughhousing on their couch, degenerating into biting into kissing into rutting. 

And as she watched the whole debacle from the doorway, as she watched Trevor’s sick smile as Michael wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed, she knew she could never love Michael like Trevor does. 

So, because it doesn’t bother her as much as it probably should, she doesn’t really mention it unless she is so angry with Michael that anything will set her off. 

That’s how the kids find out, when they’re both in high school and there’s not even a reason to bring up Trevor. She screams something about go finding Trevor and fucking his ass instead of hers and something about getting AIDs (she was pretty drunk). 

Jimmy screamed that it was the grossest thing he’d ever heard in his life before running upstairs, and Tracey looked a little caught off guard. She asked her mother if her dad and her uncle T really did that, which she responded with something like, “Yes, and he’d probably still be doing it if he didn’t fuck him over!”

Michael looked more embarrassed than anything, and Tracey looked at him thoughtfully. Amanda took another shot. 

Tracey, being an open-minded millennial, just pat her dad on the back. It wasn’t like Trevor has been an anonymous mistress, though he had his fair share of those, so it was easier for Tracey to swallow.

Amanda never understood why Michael cheated. Of course, she ended up doing it herself, but it was only in response to his cheating. 

She guessed it was because Michael’s emotions ebbed and flowed like the tide. He felt a lot, very quickly, but receded into a plain state of misery just as quickly. When they first met, he seemed to spend a lot more time emotional, angry and passionate. 

It was these times where Michael really did love Amanda, and she could tell. He held onto her in public protectively, kissed her like he really meant it. But, when he was more depressed, that was when he crawled into someone else’s bed. 

Another one of his drunken confessions was that he never meant to cheat, that it was never her fault, that he didn’t know what was wrong with him and he never knew what was happening until it was done. 

Amanda pretty rarely felt pity for Michael, but she couldn’t help it when the man she loved was blubbering drunkenly on their bedroom floor at 2am. He pretty rarely slept, and preferred to drink, so much of his liquor-induced breakdowns happened when he was on little to no sleep.

In the beginning of their relationship, she would try to be comforting when he had nightmares. She would wake him up and hold him or give him a blowjob or whatever she thought he needed. He would tell her he dreamed she was getting shot or that Trevor was ripping open his stomach and she would try to understand, but she couldn’t. 

It was about a year into their relationship when Amanda told him she thought he had PTSD. Maybe it had started when he robbed his first store, or when he went to jail, or when he started really killing, but it blossomed from something and it was driving a wedge between them. 

It was then Michael explained that much of the circumstances he grew up in and that it was probably why he was the way he was and that it’s embarrassing so he never really mentioned it. He says, “Lots had it worse, why’m I complaining?” 

He also says, “If you think I had it bad, you should ask Trevor about his birthday.” 

(She did, eventually. Trevor never knew his birthday. Nobody ever told him, and he never asked. Tracey was there, and, with all her four year old wonder, was very confused as to why his mommy and daddy never got him a cake. Him and Michael celebrated it on halloween.)

Besides the day Michael’s father backhanded him, she only met the man and woman who raised her husband twice, once at their wedding and once at Jimmy’s fifth birthday.

The wedding was considerably worse than Jimmy’s birthday. There were no kids around for anyone to restrain themselves for the sake of, and Trevor went mental just seeing his father's face. For this reason, Michael made him sit outside for a good portion of the event.

She overheard a conversation between them about this. 

“How do you not want to kill him just seeing him?” This, of course, was Trevor.

“‘Cause he’s my dad, T. Not everyone has the lack of family instincts you do.” 

“I have great family instincts. Just because I’m not still afraid of daddy because of when he slapped me around 10 years ago doesn’t mean I don’t treasure blood fucking relation.” 

“Sure. Tell that to your m-“

“If you say one. more. syllable. I’m going to knock your fucking lights out.”

Michael, thankfully, had the dignity to not respond. 

The newlyweds thought they had manage to clear Trevor’s rage, but after most people had gone home, Michael’s mother found their car keyed, with the tires slashed and the back windshield busted.

It was only when she got closer that she was able to trace the etchings with her french manicure, done for the event. It said, “For him,” and had a little smiley face drawn next to it. 

It was no secret that Trevor did this. He didn’t even try and deny it. 

Michael was fuming, wrestled him in the parking lot after most everyone else had left. Amanda watched, smiling, because she knew something Michael did not.

This was as close to a love declaration Trevor could ever give. It was his generosity, his love spell. Trevor loved him just as much as she did, and probably more and more, and Michael would never know. 

To him, this was just the act of a rebellious idiot, who cannot see past his own selfish revenge fantasies for the good of a friend. He was wrong. Trevor did this for him, only him. 

Jimmy’s fourth birthday went marginally better, probably because Trevor didn’t show up until long after his parents had left.

The air between Michael and his father was tense at best. Even if Michael hadn’t told her about what had happened, it would've been an easy guess. The older man often shot his son acidic looks when he did almost anything. 

When Michael swooped Jimmy up for hitting Tracey, asked him not to do it again, and sat him back down, his father scoffed at him.

“Last I checked, I didn’t raise a pussy.” He said, rolling his eyes, the wrinkles around his temples deepening. “If I were you, I would’ve took a belt to that kid’s ass faster than anything.” 

Michael, very quickly, becomes still by her side. 

In a self-help book for abused children her sister bought her once, there was a chapter called, “Violence Begets Violence.” It was a quote from some Martin Luther King Jr speech. 

She brought it out sometimes and traced the bold words. She thought of him. 

Michael’s mother hushed her husband, but this seemed to make him only more belligerent. “Seriously, Michael. You complain ‘bout all the slapping around I did to you but it made you better in the long run. You’ll see.” 

His wife frowned at him. “James…”

Amanda watched Michael closely. His eyes were trained on Jimmy, fat and bumbling with toddlerhood, never spanked or smacked. While he watched his son, his eyes seemed to be far away.

“Thank you, but we don’t plan on doing any of that.” Amanda spoke up, surprising herself. “We think we can get along without it.” 

Both of his parents stared at her.

“All the parenting books I read say that capital punishment doesn’t work on children, it only serves to make them either terrified of you or more rebellious.” 

Or both, if your child was Michael. 

“Well, if my kid being scared of me makes him not go off robbing banks or impregnating prostitutes, it doesn’t matter much to me.” He took a long sip of his beer, imagining that he had won the argument. The long swallow, the bobbing of his adam’s apple, punctuated Michael reaching to her hand, grabbing it like a child afraid of getting lost.

That night, after his parents had left and Trevor had arrived, she overheard another conversation, not meant for her ears. She had a knack of it, sneaking behind corners and hearing what she was not supposed to. 

“If he ever touches my kids, I’m gonna kill him, Trev. I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself.”

“You think he would?” Trevor’s voice sounded uncharacteristically soft, like the mention of the two youngest took the fight out of him.

“I know he would. I’ll tell them when they’re older, you know, why they can’t stay over.” There was a long pause. “He told me I was better for it. All of it.” 

Trevor loudly huffed and, from the sound of it, crushed a can between his hands. “You’re better without him. Better with me.” 

“I know I am.” 

She didn’t doubt this was true, and when he got in bed with her, already fucked and smelling like pure Trevor, it was easy to drift away to sleep.


End file.
